Pathway/XM System Management Manual

Pathway/XM Benefits and Features

Compaq NonStop™ Pathway/XM System Management Manual—426761-001

2-3

Predefined Configuration Files

With Pathway/XM, you perform configuration offline, in advance. Thus you can

generate multiple predefined configurations and manage your configurations as you

manage versions of your application software. Even if you make temporary changes

while managing a running application, your initial configuration is always saved, and

you do not need to generate OBEYFORM output.

Online Migration to a New Configuration

Pathway/XM provides a rolling configuration feature that allows you to migrate from

your current configuration to an entirely new configuration online. Pathway/XM

compares your active configuration to your new configuration and automatically

generates a migration plan. You can execute the migration plan at any time online,

which adds, deletes, and modifies objects as necessary to produce the new configuration.

Management by Logical, Named Groups of Objects

Pathway/XM also provides the ability to define groups of terminals or server classes that

can be referenced and operated on under a single name, with a single command. For

example, you could configure all terminals in a given location as part of a terminal

group and start all of them with a single START command. A terminal or server class

can belong to multiple groups.

Interface to $CMON Process

A server-class configuration option allows interfacing to a user-written $CMON process

upon creation of new server processes. If this option is enabled, then whenever

Pathway/XM is ready to create a new server process in a distributed server class,

Pathway/XM first sends a message to the user’s $CMON process, if one exists. The

$CMON process can then approve or modify the values of the process startup

parameters (such as CPU numbers and process priorities).

Easy Migration From the Pathway Environment

To help you migrate existing Pathway applications to the Pathway/XM environment,

Pathway/XM includes an intelligent migration utility program called PXMCNVRT.

Used together with its accompanying PATHCOM command (OBEY) file, BUILDCFG,

PXMCNVRT takes a running Pathway application, extracts the necessary information

from it, and creates a Pathway/XM configuration equivalent to your existing

PATHMON environment. This configuration is a first step; it provides improvements in

availability and limited load balancing. It also provides useful information about how

the transaction workload is balanced in your current environment.

To take advantage of other features of the Pathway/XM environment, you can then edit

the commands in the output from PXMCNVRT. In this way, you can migrate your

applications gradually, making one change at a time.